


Dazed and Confused

by tsukinofaerii



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:43:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinofaerii/pseuds/tsukinofaerii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain America has a great many duties that need careful attention. He has to... uh... That thing where... Wow, Tony's pants are awfully tight, aren't they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dazed and Confused

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ofsevenseas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofsevenseas/gifts).



> I didn't sign up for Yuletide proper this year, but since there was some unpleasantness in your letter I wanted to make sure you got something, just in case. Happy Yuletide!

Steve stretches out on top of the sheets as the sun peeks over the horizon, blissfully, delightfully relaxed. It's the same feeling he gets from a really good workout, but moreso, more liquid, more at ease. Which is fair, really, since sex is basically just another sort of exercise. One of the best, to hear Tony tell it, and Tony would know, wouldn't he?

Snuggling into the pillow, Steve turns his head. Tony's dead asleep in the morning sunlight next to him, collapsed onto his chest and drooling into the pillow. Usually his facial hair is impeccable, but Steve can make out just a hint of shadow along his jaw where it's growing back in. Dried sweat leaves odd, intricate stippling across his skin, where the light bounces just a little differently. He wants to run his fingers over it, feel the stubble on his skin.

Tony's back muscles are relaxed, but Steve can see where the lines of definition are, how they'll flex and bend and move. Bite marks litter his neck and shoulders, evidence of where Steve got carried away. Steve's pretty sure there's more of them down on his hipbones, and he definitely left one on the inside of Tony's thigh, he remembers working at it. The sunlight is angled just right, so Tony's eyelashes cast shadows across his cheekbones, and the occasional silver hair glints among the dark brown.

 _Nude looks good on him,_ Steve thinks distantly, with the tiny portion of his mind that isn't occupied going _hrnnng_. His dick aches a little just from looking, heavy against the body-warmed sheets.

The musk of sex isn't as thick in the air as it had been the night before, just enough that Steve can taste it on the back of his tongue. Behind it is just a hint of coffee that JARVIS probably started brewing when Steve first woke up. He wants to press his nose behind Tony's ear, breathe in the scent of last night, taste the salty places where sweat pooled, feel the heat building up between them while the air conditioner blows a cool breeze over his back. He's not really sure where this is going between them, but it would be worth it to hear Tony say his name again in that half-gasped, half-moaned way.

If Steve had known sex was so fantastic, he wouldn't have waited so long.

"Hey, we can take a picture if you want," Tony mutters into the pillow, without even twitching his toes. It's the smoothest transition from asleep to awake that Steve's ever seen. Unless Tony's been awake the whole time, but Steve could swear he hasn't. "Memento sort of thing."

"I—" Steve's mouth goes inexplicably dry. He swallows, which doesn't help at _all_ , because Tony's smiling now and that's just the best thing in the world. The morning erection he'd been failing to ignore certainly seems to think so, anyway. "Do I—need a memento?"

"I dunno, that time Captain America lost his virginity to Tony Stark and you were in the front row, seems like something worth remembering." Shadows on Tony's cheeks flutter, just before his eyes open. He smiles at Steve, eyes sleepy and unfocused under heavy lids. "And, really, I'm still speechless about that. You're incredibly talented for an amateur."

 _Better an amateur than a professional,_ Steve tries, and fails, to say. His eyes lock on the curve of Tony's mouth, the little flashes of tongue as he speaks. Morning breath, Steve knows, and strangely doesn't _care_. He just wants a kiss.

So he leans over and steals one, wrinkling his nose when the anticipated morning breath reaches through the fog. The scratch of Tony's in-coming beard tingles along his jaw, chapped lips sliding against his.

Tony rolls over onto his back, breaking the kiss by necessity, and Steve follows to reclaim it before he can get away. Strong hands come up around him, sliding over Steve's shoulders, calluses scraping the sensitive place along his spine.

Turns out Steve wasn't the only one with the hard on. Tony's dick presses against Steve's hip, hard and hot and just feeling it makes Steve shiver. He presses his hip down, rubbing, and Tony groans, head falling back onto the pillow.

"Maybe we can make this a habit," he babbles, grabbing a handful of Steve's ass and kneading. "A bad habit. A _really_ bad habit."

Steve thinks about it, or tries to. Thinking doesn't come easily, when Tony's staring at him like that. It curls through his stomach and head, making his heart pound. "I like bad habits," he decides, bowing his head for another kiss.  


* * *

  
As far as bad habits go, Steve's fairly certain it's the best one he's ever had, especially compared to his one attempt at smoking back before the serum. Asthma and cigarettes hadn't mixed well at all, whereas he and Tony seem to do really, really well. Maybe more than they should.

They have sex two more times before making it out the door to SHIELD for their weekly Avengers Meeting. The only reason they don't go back for a third on the car ride over is because Tony accuses Steve of using his Super Stamina against him, and then goes on about Dicks of Mass Destruction for a full ten minutes. It takes so many nuzzles and pleading nips along Tony's ear that by the time Steve manages to convince him that _one more time_ won't hurt, they've already arrived. Agent Coulson is waiting to escort them to Meeting Room Gamma, preventing them from lingering in what turns out to be an extremely roomy back seat.

Steve thinks uncharitable things about Agent Coulson for a while, and doesn't even feel bad about it.

And then it's meetings and presentations and something about giant robots from some country called _Lateral_ or something like it, and Steve feels fortunate to even have caught that much of the discussion. Tony's sitting across from him, which turns out to be almost as maddening as if he'd been in Steve's lap. Half of Steve's attention is split on stretching out a leg to bump Tony under the table, and the other half is locked on the way Tony works his fingers along the shaft of his pen when he's bored. And the way he licks his lips after a drink of coffee. And the tiny red mark visible just under his unbuttoned collar. And his _unbuttoned collar_.

It's probably a miracle Steve even realizes those are _maps_ up on the screen at all.

About half-way through the meeting, Clint yelps and slams his chair back a full three feet until it cracks against the wall."Whoever's playing footsie with me and _not Natasha_ is barking up the wrong tree. I don't swing that way."

Natasha, at the far end of the table and the only woman in the room, raises an eyebrow. "No one swings your way, either."

While the others laugh, Steve does his best to keep a poker face, and tries to pretend that Tony's grin isn't just a bit knowing as he twirls his pen.  


* * *

  
Villains, it turns out, don't really happen that often in the modern world, but when they do, they happen hard. The Wrecking Crew are barely above common street thugs in the crimes they commit, which makes it incredibly unfair that they should use super powers to commit them . Super strength should _not_ be used to rob a convenience store.

Or so Tony tells him, repeatedly, as Steve pries him out of the bent and battered remains of the armor. Back when they were getting started, Tony had taken over one of the unused small craft bays in the Helicarrier as a lab, and now Steve's using it to free Tony. The others had gone ahead to get debriefed, but Steve hadn't been able to resist the chance to get his hands on Tony in the _armor_. He couldn't put a name on it, but there was something gloriously provocative about the thought of Tony only half-dressed in his armor.

Tony doesn't seem to notice Steve's preoccupation. "They could have been knocking up Fort Knox, or the Pentagon, or selling themselves to whatever dictator they happen to like best," he whines, while Steve uses a screw driver to open one of the thigh plates. He's being pinned in place by a combination of JARVIS and very helpful robots, keeping his arms up and his weight balanced so Steve can yank him around all he needs to. "Think _big_ , you know. No one gets anywhere in life by staying street-level."

"Uh-huh." Between the slowly widening cracks in the armor, Steve can make out flashes of Tony's muscled inner thigh, and the bulge of what's definitely a post-fight erection. He wears thick spandex-like material under the plates, almost like a diving suit, but he might as well not be wearing anything, really. It's body-warm where Steve can touch it, and fits tight enough that every little shift of muscle is telegraphed.

"It's just such a waste," Tony goes on, as if Steve's mouth weren't watering. "They could have made millions, _legally_ , and now they're going to sit in Rikers. What's the point?"

"I don't know." The thigh plate finally falls free with a clang. Nothing had damaged the pelvic armor, so Steve pries that off next, clicking through the locking joints more rapidly than he could have dreamed a week ago. Of course, a week ago he hadn't had so much incentive. He drags his fingers along the edges of the armor, up near the hip joint. Tony fidgets and squirms in the restraints, but his babble doesn't even hiccup. The fabric is smooth under his fingertips, fibers barely tangible except where it's stretched, and even then the ridges are hard even for Steve to feel.

There are a few thousand things he should be doing. Fury is waiting to debrief them, and Natasha made it abundantly clear that if she has to retrieve them they aren't going to like it.They should probably visit Rikers to make sure there won't be a problem with the new inmates. Clint still needs to learn how to fight _without_ his bow, and getting him to set that down is like pulling teeth. On top of that, there's probably about a hundred reporters camped out on Tony's lawn, waiting for a comment from someone, _anyone_ , about the less-than-super villains they'd taken down.

None of that really matters when Tony's dick is right under Steve's fingers, _begging_ for attention. The contrast between warm, living _Tony_ and the metal monster that protects him takes Steve's breath away.

"We need a better class of supervillain around here, maybe that crazy brother of Thor's will try and turn us all into icicles again—Steve?" Tony finally seems to realize that Steve's stopped working on his armor. His eyebrows go up, and his hips twist a little, jutting cockily as far as he can while the robots hold him pinned. "Steve, what are you—look, if you've got a thing for the armor I can do something about that, but I'm kind of tied up here—"

Steve presses a kiss to Tony's groin, mouth working along the slightly off-center shaft, and Tony's voice babbles to a halt. Under the sharp scent of spandex he can smell Tony, a faint hint of musk and sweat from the fight, all of it covered by a reek of warm metal. Robots buzz and shift around them, but keep their hold firm against Tony's squirming. "You talk too much."

After that, Tony talking isn't a problem until Natasha follows through on her threat, and Steve doesn't think telling her to stop laughing counts.  


* * *

  
 _Fetch Stark,_ Clint had said. _Fetch, Cap, fetch!_

Just as soon as Steve finds Tony, he's going to take offense to that. Probably. But really, they need to be on the firing range soon anyway, and he's the one most likely to successfully pry Tony away from whatever's caught his interest.

And this time, he promises himself, no one will have to come pry _him_ away from Tony. Natasha hasn't told anyone about them yet, but the price of her silence gets higher daily.

"Tony?" Steve yells, peering downstairs. The lab lights are on, but there's no music playing, which means Tony's not working at least. Tony might be distracted, but it's not by work. Steve pads the rest of the way down, until he can see in through the glass walls to the lab. "Tony, we're going to be late!"

"Yeah hold up Steve, I'm coming!" Tony yells from the back. Steam boils free as he steps out of the small shower unit, a fluffy white towel wrapped low around his hips. A dark flush colors his cheeks and chest from the heat of the water. "There was a spill. Nothing lethal this time, but I had to get cleaned—hey, watch out for—"

Steve doesn't realize he's still walking until he slams face-first into the glass door.

Tony winces. "Bang, ooh, tree."

"Ow." One hand pressed to his throbbing nose, Steve uses the other to check the glass. It's sturdy—not even a crack. His nose, on the other hand, is already starting to bleed. "Thawasb't a twee."

"Cartoon when I was a kid." Tony meets him at the door with a box of tissues. "Are you okay? You just walked right into it."

"M'okay. Weally." Steve presses the tissues to his nose, eyes low. "Sowwy." The sharp edge of Tony's hipbones is _just_ visible over the towel. Water beads his shoulders and chest, parting around the arc reactor and then collecting again under it to stream down Tony's abs. Almost, he doesn't mind the prospect of bleeding out if he can keep watching.

He stares until Tony hooks a finger under his chin and forces it up, and then there's only boring ceiling to stare at and the slow, sick realization that he'd _walked into a glass door_ because Tony was a little damp.

Time to seek help, and there was only one person qualified to give it.  


* * *

  
"Ms. Potts, can I have a word...?" Steve hovers in the doorway to her office and fidgets. The CEO of Stark Industries is a busy woman, but she's always been kind to him the few times they've met. He hopes she will be this time. He'd had to sneak out of Tony's house to come to the Stark Industries main office, and he's pretty sure that someone's already called him in kidnapped or something, so there isn't time to talk her around if she doesn't want to talk. Considering that he looks like a raccoon, with a swollen nose and bruised eyes, she might just laugh him out of her office.

Ms. Potts looks up from her computer, eyebrows arched in polite bewilderment. Her lips twitch, but she—amazingly—refrains from laughing. "Of course, Captain. I always have time for our dedicated heroes." It says something that he's almost sure she means that. "What can I do for you? I see you haven't brought Tony."

"This is... It's about Tony. Sort of." He eases in and takes one of the visitor's chairs across from her. It's soft, almost squishy, and very, very comfortable. Steve assumes it must be a new form of corporate warfare, because he doesn't remember any _other_ visitor's chairs being that comfortable. "You dated him for a while, didn't you?"

Her eyebrows go even higher. "For six months or so, yes. Is this about you and Tony in the armor..?"

Red crawls up Steve's cheeks. He ducks his head so he doesn't have to meet her eyes. "Natasha wasn't supposed to tell anyone about that," he mumbles, sinking down in the chair.

"Natasha and I don't have secrets." Ms. Potts smiles and laces her fingers in a way that wouldn’t look out of place on one of the more modern villains. "Is it?"

Steve nods miserably, and wishes he could sink deeper in the chair. But it's too squishy, it sucks him in, so the best he can do is hunch down. "I just... I wanted to know..." Knuckles crack as he wrings his fingers together. "How do you _stop_?"

"Stop? You mean, break up with him?"

" _No_!" Steve nearly yells. "No," he says quieter, staring at his hands. Hands which _aren't Tony's_. He misses Tony's hands, which is absurd. He'd seen Tony less than an hour ago, face down in some sort of new design for the armor that probably wasn't what it looked like, because it looked like roller skates. "I like him. A lot. And that's the problem."

"Hmm." Steve risks a glance up at Ms. Potts' face. She's frowning in thought, but doesn't look like she's angry. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

So he does. He blushes all the way through, and he can't bring himself to go into a lot of detail, but he really doesn't need much detail to explain how Tony makes him forget to think. That first week he'd thought it had been the flush of a new relationship, of finding someone who could work beside him, shoulder to shoulder, _and_ want him, someone like Peggy had been. But then the second week happened, with its cups of coffee gone cold because he'd been watching Tony sleep, and stupid risks because he couldn't wait for a locked bedroom.

"... And now it's been a month and yesterday I walked into a glass door," Steve finishes quietly.

Ms. Potts makes a small, choked sound that's suspiciously like a snicker, but when he looks at her, her expression is nothing but honest concern. "That's a tough one," she commiserates. "But I don't see why you're asking me..?"

"How did you—you're CEO of the company, how did you stop getting distracted by him?" Steve gives her his most plaintive look, the one that used to get him free food when he'd been a kid. "Is there some trick or—or something you think of...?"

This time he catches her sniggering at him. As soon as she notices him looking, her expression smoothes back out. "It wasn't really a problem, actually. Tony and I weren't very compatible in bed. He's—he's selfish and needy and never _asks_ before trying something new and..." Steve's expression must give away his doubt. Ms. Potts leans back in her chair, temple resting against her fingertips. "And clearly you don't see how that could be a bad thing."

"But you don't like..?" Steve stumbles to an embarrassed stop before he can humiliate himself by listing any one of the dozens of things Tony does that drive him crazy. Ms. Potts has probably seen them all, but that doesn't make it any more appropriate.

"Captain, I've spent fifteen years talking Tony out of the spontaneous and impossible," she says, very gently. "Why in the world would I want to do that in the bedroom, too?"

"Oh." That makes sense, once he looks at it from that angle. Steve ducks his head and pushes up out of his chair. He's wasted enough of her time for one day. "I guess you can't help, then."

Ms. Potts uncrosses and recrosses her legs, silk whispering in the quiet office. From a standing position, she looks strangely more authoritative, a queen at her throne rather than an office worker. "Why don't you give it some time?"

"Time?"

"Time. The first flush is the strongest, but it will fade." Her smile is much more understanding than he's really comfortable with. "Not even Tony can be infinitely distracting. It'll ease up. Trust me on that."  


* * *

  
It takes three hours for Steve to explain to various SHIELD personnel that he'd only gone to visit Ms. Potts, and no he hadn't been abducted, and no he hadn't been replaced by space aliens, and no he wasn't being recruited by a terrorist cell, and _no_ he wasn't going to tell anyone what they talked about.

That's a lot of nos, even for Steve, and by the time he finishes he's more than a little grumpy. He gets back to Tony's house—which he should probably start thinking of as _home_ some day—and tromps his way down to the lab. At least Tony can usually be counted on not to demand blood samples.

Tony isn't as lost in his work as he was before Steve left. He glances up from his holographic chalkboard with a grin. Thanks to the existence of JARVIS, Tony's clothes are free of chalk, ink and oil. In spite of that, he's still managed to obtain a state of elegant dishabille that should be impossible with a t-shirt and ripped jeans. "Coulson find you? He came looking. Wouldn't believe me when I told him I'd left you in bed. I think he thought I was hiding you under the desk."

Inevitably, Steve's mind tracks to what he'd be doing under Tony's desk, and he has to give himself a shake. _Give it some time_ , Ms. Potts had said, but that's so hard to do when Tony's so hard to ignore. "Coulson found me," he admits, trying to force his eyes anywhere but Tony's smile, his hands, the rip where his skin peeks through his jeans—anywhere but _Tony_ , really. "I think I'm grounded now."

"Dad yelled at you, huh?" Thick, strong fingers sketch out a line, then jot out some sort of mathematical symbol across the board, delicate and precise as a pianist at his instrument. As if actually working with paper, he licks his finger and flips an imaginary page. For not being a real writing surface, the board Tony's using is suspiciously shiny. He can see Tony's expression as he works, the flick of his eyes as he glances over at Steve, then back to what he's doing.

"Yeah." Steve wets his lips, but his mouth's gone dry. Tony can't really know what he's doing, Steve tells himself. The way his shoulders move when he's sketching is just muscles being muscles. Steve is _not_ going to give in to his dick. Just once, he's going to be strong. "Yeah, Fury wasn't happy."

"Fury's never happy. Part of his charm." Slowly, _definitely_ deliberately, Tony stretches up to work on a part of the board over his head. It bares a sliver of tanned skin along the small of his back.

After a long minute of drawing graphs where none need to be, Tony glances back over his shoulder. Dark eyes give Steve a long look, on that he almost misses for trying not to stare. "Hey, you going to hide out over there all night, or should I put out a box trap and lure you in? I think I have some candy around here somewhere."

 _I'm already here,_ Steve reasons to himself, which is actually no reason at all, but the best he can do when he's already started to move. "No trap needed." Meandering his way across the lab, he slips his arms around Tony from behind and props his chin on Tony's shoulder to look at his work. He's almost positive that it _is_ rocket powered roller skates after all. "You know, that never worked out well for the cartoon coyote."

"Because he ordered Acme, not Stark." Tony leans back against him, and it really only makes sense that Steve worm his hands under Tony's shirt to feel the firm ripple of his abdominals. The thin trail of stomach hair plays along his fingertips, and muscles slide under firm skin. Steve runs his fingers up to Tony's ribs, then back down slowly to toy with the waistline of his jeans. While doing that he watches Tony draw on the air, sketching out figures and equations that are more symbols than numbers. Then he frowns and rubs his chin against Tony's shoulder thoughtfully. "Is that a transistor?"

"Mmhm," Tony hums, adding a few more strokes to sketch in the start of another part of the skate.

"Why do you have it listed as part of the power supply?" Steve's eyebrows draw together. He doesn't know much of anything about engineering, but he knows enough to recognize that something's off. "They don't do that, do they?"

"They—" Tony's stylus stops midair. Hastily, he tears away the offending plan. Sparks dance along the sheet as he wads it up and tosses it over his shoulder. "Of course they don't. I was just testing you."

"Sure you were. Why don't we go to bed, huh?" Turning his head, Steve kisses Tony's jaw. It's just a bit stubbly, where he hasn't shaved since that morning. "Leave the roller skates to the coyotes."

"I don't know, I think I've almost—" Steve scrapes his teeth over Tony's pulse, and the objections die off. "Oh-okay. Yeah, okay, that sounds—yeah."

Maybe, Steve thinks as he leads Tony to the stairs, a bad habit isn't so bad as long as it goes both ways.


End file.
